Jane Franklin - Infinite Women

Born: 4 December 1791, United Kingdom
Died: 18 July 1875
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Lady Franklin, Jane Griffin

This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Australasian Biography: Comprising notices of eminent colonists from the inauguration of responsible government down to the present time. [1855-1892] by Phillip Mennell, F.R.G.S., published by Hutchinson & Co., 25 Paternoster Square and 1892. The text was reproduced via Project Gutenberg.

Franklin, Lady, the wife of the ill-fated Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin, was the daughter of John Griffin, and was born in 1792. She married Sir John as his second wife at Liverpool in Nov. 1828, and accompanied him to Van Diemen’s Land when he was appointed Governor there in 1836. They arrived in the island in Jan. 1837 and remained till August 1843. She was a great traveller, and was the first lady to cross overland from Sydney to Port Phillip, a feat she accomplished in May 1839, two years only after the latter settlement was founded. Though a most intrepid explorer, Sir John was only a weak administrator, and his term of office was embittered by perpetual contentions between Lady Franklin and Montagu, the Colonial Secretary, nephew of the previous Governor, Arthur, as to which should dictate the policy of the Government, the matter being ultimately the subject of amusing references to the Colonial Office, who when Sir John Franklin dismissed Montagu practically reversed his decision. In 1845 Sir John Franklin proceeded on his ill-fated expedition to the Arctic seas, and perished in 1847. His wife’s heroic efforts in organising search expeditions are well known. In 1860 she was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, being the first woman on whom that distinction was conferred. She died in London on July 18th, 1875, aged eighty-three years.

The following is excerpted from The Dictionary of Australian Biography by Percival Searle, published in 1949 by Angus and Robertson and republished by Project Gutenberg.

FRANKLIN, JANE, LADY (1792-1875), second wife of Sir John Franklin (q.v.), was the second daughter of John Griffin. a liveryman and later a governor of the Goldsmith’s Company, and his wife Jane Guillemard. There was Huguenot blood on both sides of her family. She was born in 1792, was well educated, and her father being well-to-do had her education completed by much travel on the continent. Her portrait painted when she was 24 by Miss Romilly at Geneva shows her to have been a pretty girl with charm and vivacity. She had been a friend of (Sir) John Franklin’s first wife who died early in 1825, and in 1828 became engaged to him. They were married on 5 November and in 1829 he was knighted. During the next three years she was much parted from her husband who was on service in the Mediterranean. In 1836 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Tasmania where they arrived on 6 January 1837.
Lady Franklin at once began to take an interest in the colony and did a good deal of exploring along the southern and western coast. In April 1839 she visited the new settlement at Melbourne, where she received an address signed by 65 of the leading citizens which referred to her “character for kindness, benevolence and charity”. With her husband she encouraged the founding of secondary schools for both boys and girls. In 1841 she visited South Australia and persuaded the governor, Colonel Gawler (q.v.), to set aside some ground overlooking Spencer Gulf for a monument to Flinders (q.v.). This was set up later in the year. She had much correspondence with Elizabeth Fry about the female convicts, and did what she could to ameliorate their lot. She was accused of using undue influence with her husband in his official acts but there is no evidence of this. No doubt he was glad to have her help in solving his problems, and probably they collaborated in the founding of the scientific society which afterwards developed into the Royal Society of Tasmania. When Franklin was recalled at the end of 1843 they went first to Melbourne and then to England by way of New Zealand. Franklin started on his last voyage in May 1845, and when it was realized that he must have come to disaster Lady Franklin devoted herself for many years to trying to ascertain his fate. By 1860 all had been done that could be done, and for the remainder of her life Lady Franklin divided her time between living in England and travelling in all quarters of the world. She died in London on 18 July 1875.
Lady Franklin was a woman of unusual character and personality. One of the earliest women in Tasmania who had had the full benefit of education and cultural surroundings, she was both an example and a force, and set a new standard in ways of living to the more prosperous settlers who were now past the stage of merely struggling for a living. Her determined efforts, in connexion with which she spent a great deal of her own money to discover the fate of her husband, incidentally added much to the world’s knowledge of the arctic regions.

This biography, written by Pamela Beasant, has been republished with permission from the Dangerous Women Project, created by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.

Operating in a world dominated by alpha male, Empire-building heroics, it’s interesting how many nineteenth century women shine through clearly as movers and shakers. One of those was undoubtedly Lady Jane Franklin (1791-1875), second wife of Sir John Franklin who was lost along with all his crew in the ill-fated Arctic expedition of 1845.
Lady Jane Franklin had a remarkable personality, a large sphere of influence, and an indefatigable determination. When Sir John was sent to Tasmania as Governor in the 1830s and 40s, she travelled widely, improved the wretched conditions that female prisoners endured, encouraged the building of schools for boys and girls, commissioned a temple, and founded a museum. Rocks, bays and mountains in USA, Canada and Australia bear her name, as do a residential college and an art gallery in Tasmania, which developed from the museum she founded.
When Sir John Franklin went missing in the Arctic, Lady Jane had to wait several years to hear news of his death, during which time she worked tirelessly to ensure that he was kept in the public eye, and that the difficult, dangerous searches for him would continue. She funded many rescue voyages from her own pocket. In the end, the news was brought by an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Dr John Rae, who had heard it in the Arctic from the Inuit people. Dr Rae reported that the crews of Franklin’s ships, the Erebus and Terror, had been found, and artefacts had been taken, which he was able to barter for and bring back to London. Further, there was evidence of cannibalism among the few remaining souls, as they struggled to survive in conditions they were neither trained nor equipped to deal with. Dr Rae sent his report to the Admiralty, who quickly published it in The Times, in its entirety, which was never his intention. The part which caused the trouble read: ‘From the mutilated state of many of the corpses, and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource, cannibalism, as a means of prolonging existence.’
It’s hard to imagine now the consternation Dr Rae’s report caused. Victorian society could not stomach it, and would not believe it. That men from the British Navy could behave in this way was dismissed outright, and from that day forward, Lady Jane and her supporters, including Charles Dickens, in his periodical Household Words, set out to not only discredit Dr Rae’s report, but effectively to remove him from history. Lady Jane Franklin’s claim that her husband found the much-sought-after North-West passage, which would open up trade between West and East, is still carved into Franklin’s tomb in Westminster Abbey, and is still untrue.
Lady Jane Franklin wanted her husband to be remembered as a hero. In fact, when he set out on his final expedition he was 59 years old, overweight and unfit, and had been sidelined several times by the authorities, who didn’t seem to know what to do with him. Relying on the latest technology, including the recently invented method of canning food (involving the use of lead), the Naval crews, who were undoubtedly excellent in ships, did not know how to survive over land in the Arctic, and their leaders were too arrogant to communicate with the indigenous people, who could have saved their lives.
By that time, Dr John Rae had been in the Arctic for years, and had mapped and surveyed well over a thousand miles of previously unexplored land. There was absolutely no one better over land, and his physical stamina and endurance were legendary at the time. More significantly, he realised from the outset that the best way of learning how to survive in that unforgiving landscape was to learn from the people who had been doing it for centuries. This seems obvious now, but back then it was considered very strange, and the casual racism that permeated all levels of polite society was astonishing. (Charles Dickens described the ‘native’ people in the Arctic as by nature ‘covetous, treacherous and cruel’, which was vehemently refuted by John Rae, who actually knew the people.)
The forces of that society were ranged against John Rae when he met and married Kate, who was only twenty-one to his forty-six. Born Catharine Thompson, she had grown up in Hamilton, Ontario, of Irish extraction, and she was an exuberant, intelligent character, who loved to travel, and made friends wherever she went. Despite their age difference, the marriage between John and Kate was loving and equal, and he was lucky to find her after his years of trekking in the Arctic. There was a child-like quality about the explorer, and apparently, John and Kate fell asleep every night holding hands.
Kate’s father, an army major, vehemently disapproved of the match at first. The Hudson’s Bay men had a bad reputation for taking ‘country wives’ and fathering many illegitimate children, and Rae had had plenty of time and opportunity to do both. Kate was defiant and determined, however, and when her father made enquiries about Rae, he discovered the respect in which the explorer was held amongst his peers, and backed down. Rae and Kate, however, did not forget the opposition, and when they married, set sail for England immediately. They never returned to live in Canada. Kate’s sister, Emily, was a close friend and companion, and lived with the couple, then with Kate after John’s death, for the rest of their lives.
John Rae had never been good at advancing himself, and never produced exciting, romantic stories about his travels (though his meticulous diaries, published later, are fascinating to read), such as the epics written by Sir John Franklin, which captured the Victorian imagination. And although Rae did gain the grudging respect of the establishment, he was never properly recognized for what he did, in terms of mapping and surveying the uncharted Arctic coastline, and being the first person to deduce accurately exactly where the North-West Passage lay. (Many of his original, exquisite charts, are now housed in the excellent Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg.) He was unfairly vilified for reporting the cannibalism of Franklin’s crews, and his reputation, blighted by Lady Jane Franklin and friends, has never recovered.
Lady Jane died in 1875, and John Rae in 1893. Kate Rae survived her husband by twenty-six years, and never gave up trying to right some of these wrongs. She always intended to write his life, but was prevented by ill health. She did, however, organize his extensive papers, wrote catalogues and encouraged exhibitions; and she patiently highlighted, wherever possible, the achievements which had never been properly credited to him. Kate Rae maintained a large correspondence in the latter part of her life, and what shines out is her clear spirit, her dogged faith in Rae’s case, and their great love.
Lady Jane Franklin had worked equally tirelessly, however, and with her connections amongst the higher echelons of society, and her fearsome way of mowing down any opposition, her campaign had been ultimately more effective.
Kate, as the wife of an extraordinary man unfairly marginalized by history, is in danger of being forgotten, unlike her adversary Lady Jane Franklin, herself a remarkable, and dangerous, force. John Rae recognized Kate as a great spirit, and in her own quietly determined way, she has helped to lay the foundations of truth about that time, and the characters involved, which is waiting patiently to be fully exposed and acknowledged.